Literacy, Boys and Scouting

Get Boys to Read with Boys Life!

Do you want your son to read?

Well so does the Boy Scouts of America! That’s why I was really excited to read about their new Literacy Matters campaign in the 2013 May/June issue of Scouting magazine. You can check it out online right here.

Since I was a Girl Scout, I never got to read Boys’ Life magazine growing up. (Now I realize where all of my husband’s jokes come from.)

It turns out that Boys’ Life is just one of many ways that the BSA is supporting literacy. Troop meetings, pack meetings, and camping trips can all be opportunities to encourage boys to read. Volunteers can encourage a love of reading by modeling their own love of books.

As Michael Gurian mentions in the article, so much media attention gets focused on girls falling behind in math and science, that people are forgetting that there is a 10% literacy gap for boys.

I’ve seen this when I used to be a teacher. Third grade seems to be when some boys really start falling behind. But the good news is that if you catch that problem in time, you can still turn boys into bibliophiles.